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Fri, 09 Dec 2016 15:29:10 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.6.1Obama’s Former Pentagon Chiefs: Military Suffered From Overbearing, Inexperienced White Househttp://freebeacon.com/national-security/obamas-pentagon-chiefs-military-suffered-overbearing-white-house/
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/obamas-pentagon-chiefs-military-suffered-overbearing-white-house/#respondThu, 07 Apr 2016 20:41:56 +0000http://freebeacon.com/?p=588697The post Obama’s Former Pentagon Chiefs: Military Suffered From Overbearing, Inexperienced White House appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.
]]>The U.S. military has been hindered by an overbearing and inexperienced White House under President Barack Obama, according to each of his three former defense secretaries, causing the Pentagon to struggle to carry out operations and make decisions.

“It was the operational micromanagement that drove me nuts, of White House and [National Security Council] staffers calling senior commanders out in the field and asking them questions, of second-guessing commanders,” former Defense Secretary Robert Gates told Bret Baier in a new Fox News special called “Rising Threats, Shrinking Military.”

Gates was a holdover from the George W. Bush administration, and Obama kept him on as Pentagon chief. He described how, when he served in the White House, he would have “had [his] head handed to [him], probably personally by the president,” if he tried to call a field commander while circumventing senior Pentagon officials.

“I told the combatant commanders and field commanders … if you get a call from some White House or National Security Council staffer, you tell them to call me instead, and then tell them, oh, by the way, go to hell,” Gates said, smiling. “And that’s directly from the secretary of defense.”

Gates’ successor, Leon Panetta, took office in July 2011 and told Baier he had similar concerns with the Obama administration, despite being a long-time Democrat who served as a California congressman for many years and as Bill Clinton’s chief of staff.

Panetta complained that the president’s national security council staff had gotten so large and overbearing in recent years, creating massive inefficiency with creating foreign and defense policy.

“What that does is it undermines the very process that a president needs in order to get the best discussion and information possible to be able to make the right decisions,” Panetta explained.

The former defense secretary then went beyond the White House staff and expressed concern that the president’s policies have made the United States appear weak on the world stage.

“I think what I’ve seen in these last four years is almost this cautiousness and overcorrection, which makes it appear that the United States is hesitant to take action,” Panetta said. “And that sends, I think, a message of weakness.”

Chuck Hagel, who replaced Panetta in February 2013, agreed that the size and role of the White House staff during the Obama presidency made it difficult to accomplish tasks and be productive.

“There were always too many meetings and always too many people in the room and too many people talking,” Hagel described. “Especially young, smart 35-year-old PhDs [who] love to talk because that’s the way you let everybody know how smart you are. So there were a lot of reasons those meetings descended into… nonsense and the hard time we had making a decision.”

Hagel focused especially on the inexperience of the president himself and his staff, describing how Obama is “one of the youngest presidents we’ve ever had, one of the most inexperienced presidents we’ve ever had. He has a staff around him that’s very inexperienced. I don’t think there’s one veteran on his senior staff at the White House. I don’t believe there’s one business person. I don’t believe there’s one person who’s ever run anything. Other than Vice President Biden, none of them have ever been elected to anything.”

Hagel added that he is not sure if Obama or his staff ever understood “the tremendous responsibility the United States has… to lead.”

Gates said he is concerned the president is suspicious of the military. He also said Obama was told by White House personnel during the debate over the war in Afghanistan that the Pentagon was trying to “box him in,” “trap him,” and “bully him,” which Gates said was never true.

“But there were clearly a number of people at the White House who believed that,” Gates said.

Ash Carter took over as Obama’s fourth defense secretary in February 2015 and continues to serve today.

]]>http://freebeacon.com/national-security/obamas-pentagon-chiefs-military-suffered-overbearing-white-house/feed/0Gates: Obama Thinks He’s Smartest Guy in Room, Ineffective at Developing and Implementing Strategyhttp://freebeacon.com/national-security/gates-obama-thinks-smartest-ineffective-developing-implementing-strategy/
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/gates-obama-thinks-smartest-ineffective-developing-implementing-strategy/#respondTue, 19 Jan 2016 15:43:58 +0000http://freebeacon.com/?p=547399The post Gates: Obama Thinks He’s Smartest Guy in Room, Ineffective at Developing and Implementing Strategy appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.
]]>Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Tuesday that President Obama thinks he is smarter than his advisers and that he surrounds himself with people who will not question his views. As a result, the White House has struggled to develop and implement effective strategy during the Obama administration, according to Gates.

“You know, the president is quoted as having said at one point to his staff, ‘I can do every one of your jobs better than you can,’” Gates said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

“Oh my God, ” host Joe Scarborough said.

Gates’ statement was in response to Scarborough, who asked, “President Obama has actually been criticized for always thinking he’s the smartest guy in the room … Did Barack Obama always think he was the smartest guy in the room?”

The question came while Gates and the Morning Joe panel were discussing leadership skills presidents must possess to govern effectively. Gates appeared on the show to promote his new book, A Passion for Leadership: Lessons on Change and Reform from Fifty Years of Public Service, which examines how leaders at all levels in both the public and private sector can better manage organizations and bureaucracies to be more responsive.

Gates also said he thinks “one of the greatest weaknesses of the White House is implementation of strategy, is difficulty in developing strategy and then implementing that strategy.”

The former secretary of defense added that there are no “strong” people around the president who will challenge him on issues. Gates credited Obama for not shutting him down when he pushed back against the president while serving in the cabinet from 2009 to 2011, but he does not see people around Obama now who offer alternative views.

Critics have said the president is stubborn and does not listen to opposing viewpoints, even from his own staff. Politico published a story in October highlighting how this was the case with the administration’s Syria policy when the president’s advisors urged him to take more aggressive action, which Obama refused to do.

Another incident critics cite is when Obama was still a Senator from Illinois and traveled to Iraq in 2007. General David Petraeus, then commanding U.S. forces for the war effort, gave Obama his assessment of the fight against al Qaeda and how to prosecute it. Obama disagreed with the general’s analysis, arguing that Petraeus had it wrong.

Gates also was critical of Obama because “he has centralized power and operational activities of the government in the White House to a degree that I think is unparalleled. An NSC [National Security Council] staff of 450 people at this point.”

Senior military officials have expressed frustration with the White House under Obama for micromanaging the Pentagon and keeping national security decisions isolated within the president’s staff. Another former secretary of defense who served under Obama, Chuck Hagel, recently lambasted the president and his staff for “politically motivated micromanagement” and “debilitating meddling” of the military.

Gates himself has said on previous occasions that he was frustrated with how the White House dealt with the Pentagon.

“It was the operational micromanagement that drove me nuts, of White House and NSC staffers calling senior commanders out in the field … second-guessing commanders,” Gates told Fox News last fall.

“That’s the kind of thing that made me crazy … It was with the background of having served on the NSC under four presidents … When I was deputy national security advisor, if I would have tried to call a field commander, going around Dick Cheney, who was Secretary of Defense, or Colin Powell, who was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, I’d of had my head handed to me, probably personally, by the president.”

Gates has served under eight presidents in various high-level roles, including as secretary of defense for both George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

]]>http://freebeacon.com/national-security/gates-obama-thinks-smartest-ineffective-developing-implementing-strategy/feed/0Hagel: Obama Admin Tried to ‘Destroy’ Mehttp://freebeacon.com/national-security/hagel-obama-admin-tried-to-destroy-me/
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/hagel-obama-admin-tried-to-destroy-me/#respondFri, 18 Dec 2015 16:18:09 +0000http://freebeacon.com/?p=534298Chuck Hagel, the former secretary of defense who resigned under pressure from the Obama administration last November, said in a recent interview that the White House castigated him for refusing to approve the transfer of Guantanamo Bay detainees he deemed too dangerous.

]]>Chuck Hagel, the former secretary of defense who resigned under pressure from the Obama administration last November, said in a recent interview that the White House castigated him for refusing to approve the transfer of Guantanamo Bay detainees he deemed too dangerous.

In an interview with Foreign Policy, Hagel said that the Obama administration pressured him to approve transfers of Guantanamo prisoners to other countries. When he responded by refusing or delaying transfers of dozens of detainees who he judged were at risk to rejoin terrorist organizations, he received “brutal” pushback from the White House.

“It got pretty bad, pretty brutal,” Hagel, a Vietnam War veteran, stated. “I’d get the hell beat out of me all the time on this at the White House.”

President Obama, who promised to close the military prison at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba when he took office, has pressed forward with the effort despite concerns from lawmakers and increased terrorism fears in the country. Obama has threatened to use executive action to shutter the prison.

Last week, reports surfaced that a former Guantanamo Bay detainee named Ibrahim al-Qosi had joined the al Qaeda branch in Yemen, appearing as a leader of the group in jihadist propaganda.

In addition to disagreements on the release of terrorist suspects detained at Guantanamo, Hagel also spoke of his frustration with the White House on its lack of a sound policy in Syria and failure to quickly respond to the Russian intervention in Ukraine. Hagel, who was replaced by current Defense Secretary Ash Carter in February, alleged that the Obama administration tried to “destroy” him following his announcement of his resignation in November 2014:

[Hagel] said the Pentagon was subject to debilitating meddling and micromanagement by the White House–echoing criticism made by his predecessors, Robert Gates and Leon Panetta. Looking back on his tenure, Hagel said in the Dec. 10 interview that he remains puzzled as to why some administration officials sought to “destroy” him personally in his final days in office, castigating him in anonymous comments to newspapers even after he had handed in his resignation. Although he does not identify her by name, Hagel’s criticisms are clearly aimed at Obama’s national security advisor, Susan Rice, and some of her staff. Hagel’s former aides, and former White House officials, say the defense secretary frequently butted heads with Rice over Syria policy and the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo.

On Syria, Hagel said that Obama’s decision to hold off on military action after President Bashar al-Assad crossed his so-called “red line” by using chemical weapons on his own people “hurt the credibility” of the United States.

“A president’s word is a big thing, and when the president says things, that’s a big deal,” he added.

Hagel also said that he received criticism from the White House after describing the ISIS threat as “beyond anything that we’ve seen” in August of last year. Months earlier, Obama had referred to ISIS as a “J.V. team.”

“Then I got accused of trying to hype something, overstate something, and make something more than it was,” Hagel said. “I didn’t know all of it, but I knew we were up against something here that we had never seen before. And in many ways, we were not prepared for it.”

Last month, ISIS carried out coordinated terror attacks in Paris that killed 130 people and wounded hundreds of others.

]]>http://freebeacon.com/national-security/hagel-obama-admin-tried-to-destroy-me/feed/0Chuck Hagel on Fighting Islamic State: ‘There Is No Military Solution’http://freebeacon.com/national-security/chuck-hagel-on-fighting-islamic-state-there-is-no-military-solution/
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/chuck-hagel-on-fighting-islamic-state-there-is-no-military-solution/#respondSun, 22 Nov 2015 15:21:15 +0000http://freebeacon.com/?p=522085The post Chuck Hagel on Fighting Islamic State: ‘There Is No Military Solution’ appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.
]]>Former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said Sunday that it was his and former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey’s opinion that “there is no military solution” to defeating the Islamic State terrorist organization.

Appearing on State of the Union with Jake Tapper, Hagel delved into the secret memo he sent last year criticizing the Obama administration’s handling of Middle East policy. A source at the time suggested Hagel had internal disagreements with White House policy on Iraq and Syria, and Hagel would up resigning just weeks after the Democrats were routed in the 2014 midterm elections.

Hagel said Islamic State presented a “complicated” problem and the U.S. needed to sort out whether Assad or IS was the enemy.

“First, I think everyone understands what we are up against in the world today,” Hagel said. “ISIS and all the different elements of terrorism and dynamics and historic differences and challenges and threats is complicated … There are no easy, simple solutions, regardless of some who appear to have very glib, quick solutions.

“Second, I always felt that we needed to more clearly define our political strategy, along with our military strategy, because it’s my opinion, it certainly was the opinion of the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marty Dempsey, he can speak for himself, but it was our opinion that there is no military solution to this. We are up against an ideology. We are up against a reality of dynamics, a set of dynamics we’ve never seen before. Sophistication of social media, the military prowess, the tactical, strategic prowess that ISIS possesses, the funding. So we should more clearly define what is our political strategy. What are our priorities? Who is the enemy here? Is Assad the enemy or is ISIS the enemy?”

“Do you think that we should not have Assad as our designated enemy right now? We should focus on ISIS?” Tapper asked.

“Well, Assad is a very bad guy,” Hagel said. “There are bad guys all over the world, but I think it’s pretty clear that ISIS represents the real threat to our country, to the world. I said so 15 months ago in a press conference when I was asked about ISIS … Assad has to be dealt with, but you can’t confuse your allies and your adversaries by saying Assad must go.”

Hagel said the main complaint of his memo was that the Obama administration had not defined its “political strategy” about addressing the Syrian regime.

In June, National Security Adviser Susan Rice said Sgt. Bergdahl served the United States “with honor and distinction” during an interview on This Week, and other administration members also defended the soldier now being charged with leaving his post. Secretary of State John Kerry slightly hedged during a CNN interview after hearing Rice’s words, but when reporter Elise Labott said Kerry sounded like he wasn’t sure about Bergdahl serving with honor, Kerry said that wasn’t what he was saying.

Then-Press Secretary Jay Carney also defended Rice’s choice of words.

“Sgt. Bergdahl put on the uniform of the United States voluntarily and went to war for the United States voluntarily,” Carney said. “That takes honor and is a mark of distinction.”

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel battled the allegations and strongly defended the trade agreement of Gitmo prisoners for Bergdahl as well.

“[It’s] a bit unfair to Sgt. Bergdahl’s family and to him to presume anything,” he said.

McSally is a retired Air Force colonel and has 325 combat hours in the A-10 in Iraq and Afghanistan. She also commanded an A-10 squadron.

“From my experience as an A-10 pilot and squadron commander, I know first hand the unique capabilities of the A-10 in close air support, forward air control-airborne, and combat search and rescue missions,” McSally wrote. “The Warthog is anything but a ‘single mission aircraft’ and there is simply no other asset that can match its lethality, loiter time, and survivability. The decision to retire it is reckless and will put American lives at risk.”

The A-10 Warthog was a Washington Free Beacon Man of the Year in 2014.

]]>http://freebeacon.com/national-security/air-force-vet-rep-martha-mcsally-urges-obama-to-fund-a-10-warthogs/feed/0House Member Seeks Probe of Bergdahl Ransom Paymenthttp://freebeacon.com/national-security/house-member-seeks-probe-of-bergdahl-ransom-payment/
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/house-member-seeks-probe-of-bergdahl-ransom-payment/#respondMon, 01 Dec 2014 23:10:53 +0000http://freebeacon.com/?p=364750A House Armed Services Committee member asked the Pentagon’s inspector general on Monday to conduct a formal investigation into reports that the Pentagon paid a large ransom in a failed bid to free Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl from terrorist custody.

]]>A House Armed Services Committee member asked the Pentagon’s inspector general on Monday to conduct a formal investigation into reports that the Pentagon paid a large ransom in a failed bid to free Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl from terrorist custody.

“The IG has an obligation to investigate this matter even more so now that the Defense Department is trying to sidestep the whole situation,” Rep. Duncan Hunter (R., Calif.) told the Free Beacon.

“Either we didn’t pay, and don’t pay, which is the official Defense Department line, or we did pay, as others within the Defense Department continue to insist. This is worthy of an investigation and my hope is the IG will move to sort out the facts.”

In the Dec. 1 letter to Pentagon Inspector General Jon T. Rymer, Hunter stated: “While I am aware that you previously declined to investigate this matter, I respectfully request once again that your office initiate a review to determine the order of events under which payments of any type were made.”

Hunter also asked the IG to probe whether payments made to an Afghan national as part of the failed effort to ransom Bergdahl in January or February may have violated federal laws against providing support to terrorists.

The congressman stated that an initial step in the inquiry should be to interview five people at the Joint Special Operations Command, part of the Tampa-based U.S. Special Operations Command.

“Further discussion with these five individuals is warranted since several of those who are listed are reported to have discussed and acknowledged the payment,” Hunter said.

“An audit of Bergdahl recovery options determined that JSOC did in fact have two lines of effort under consideration—a kinetic rescue and a ransom payment,” Hunter added.

The ransom payment may have been couched as part of the command’s “different methods for initiating payments, without a formal declaration of a ransom,” he said.

“Therefore, any payments that might have been made—even under the guise of obtaining information—must be thoroughly scrutinized,” the letter concluded.

Pentagon spokesman Adm. John Kirby said “we’ve not seen the letter so it would be inappropriate to comment.”

The request for the IG probe of the ransom payment followed a letter sent to the lawmaker late last month from Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. In the letter, Hagel denied that a ransom payment was made in the Bergdahl case but also stated that the secretary had “no information” whether payments were made to an Afghan national in the matter.

Hunter has been investigating the issue since July when he met with officials from the IG’s office and discussed the matter.

The IG in August declined to investigate the case, and requested the identities of the specific people who were aware of the payments, promising them official whistleblower protection.

Bergdahl was released in May as part of a controversial prisoner release that freed five terrorists held at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba prison. Bergdahl had been a captive since June 2009 and had voiced anti-United States military views.

According to defense officials, as part of the JSOC operation to free Bergdahl, the command made a large payment to an Afghan national who said he could arrange the release. However, the Afghan took the money and disappeared.

Hagel in his Nov. 21 letter to Hunter said the Pentagon “did not make any payment of ransom nor make any attempt to pay ransom for the release of Sgt. Bergdahl.” He then added that “we have no information that any payment was made to an Afghan intermediary in exchange for facilitating Sgt. Bergdahl’s release.”

The carefully worded letter was less categorical about the payments than comments to reporters made by Adm. John Kirby, Hagel’s spokesman, who said earlier that there was no ransom and no money “exchanged at all to secure Sgt. Bergdahl’s release.” Kirby also said that there was no failed attempt to pay ransom money.

According to Hunter, the ransom payment was made covertly by JSOC to an Afghan who claimed to represent the Haqqani Group, an Afghan terrorist group.

The FBI also was consulted on the payment and had an agent in Afghanistan awaiting Bergdahl’s release, defense officials said.

If confirmed, the ransom payment would undermine a key tenet of President Obama’s new counterterrorism strategy that currently is seeking to discourage foreign governments, businesses and families of captives from making ransom payments.

The new al Qaeda offshoot Islamic State has raised more than $25 million this year from ransoming off hostages, according to the U.S. Treasury Department, which is leading the anti-ransom efforts.

The White House also announced last month that it is reviewing U.S. policies that prohibit ransom payments but that it continues to oppose any ransom payments.

Defense officials said the payments likely were part of a $5 million fund that the commander of the U.S. Central Command has at his disposal, which can be used to pay rewards or to purchase information leading to the release of captives.

Another factor complicating any investigation into special operations activities related to Bergdahl are indications that commandos conducted a raid into a northern Pakistan border region in late 2013.

According to defense sources, U.S. commandos conducted a raid into the region and raided a house where Bergdahl was believed held. Bergdahl was not at the house, but the raid included the capture of a terrorist who had been the leader of the group holding him hostage. The terrorist is believed to be in U.S. custody.

However, because the raid had involved crossing the Durand Line separating Afghanistan from Pakistan, the raid may have violated a strict U.S. prohibition on cross-border military activities.

The release of Bergdahl followed several different covert efforts to win his freedom, including State Department negotiations with the Taliban; Pakistani government efforts and a reported plan by the Bergdahl family to pay $10 million in ransom.

]]>http://freebeacon.com/national-security/abc-hagel-saga-emblematic-of-everything-thats-wrong-with-obamas-management-style/feed/0THE LAST STRAW: Chuck Hagel’s Disgraceful Exit Reveals Free Beacon’s Moral Decayhttp://freebeacon.com/blog/the-last-straw-chuck-hagels-disgraceful-exit-reveals-free-beacons-moral-bankruptcy/
Tue, 25 Nov 2014 20:16:06 +0000http://freebeacon.com/?post_type=blog&p=362686FERGUSON, Mo. — A couple of weeks ago I was on a date with a lovely woman of the goth persuasion. I was doing pretty well—naturally—and she invited me to her apartment in Brooklyn, where she put on some music to set the mood.

Not because the song elicits memories of my days purging Eastern Europe of Soviet meatheads. Not because I wanted to invite the sympathy of my companion, to feel the bristles of her Elvira wig against my cheek, her black-painted nails pressed into my shoulder.

]]>FERGUSON, Mo. — A couple of weeks ago I was on a date with a lovely woman of the goth persuasion. I was doing pretty well—naturally—and she invited me to her apartment in Brooklyn, where she put on some music to set the mood.

Not because the song elicits memories of my days purging Eastern Europe of Soviet meatheads. Not because I wanted to invite the sympathy of my companion, to feel the bristles of her Elvira wig against my cheek, her black-painted nails pressed into my shoulder.

No. I wept for America.

I’d like to say “good riddance” to Chuck Hagel, who was fired on Monday, presumably after President Obama determined that he was a little too committed to weakening America. During his brief tenure as secretary of defense, Hagel presided over the rise of ISIS, the emboldening of Vladimir Putin, and the removal of Taylor Swift’s music catalog from Spotify. We now live in a world where France—France—is more willing to defend freedom than the United States. Hagel’s departure is welcome news to the few of us who still believe American is better than France.

Hagel should never have been confirmed in the first place. Hell, it pains me to say this, but I would rather have Hillary Clinton as secretary of defense; at least she loves war.

Don’t say you weren’t warned about Hagel. I tried to sound the alarm. Unfortunately, my efforts were wasted on the Washington Free Beacon, the most pathetic excuse for a neocon rag I’ve encountered since War Fancy, the bimonthly journal I briefly edited in the 1980s before it was taken over by leftists who thought Ronald Reagan was tough on communism.

Derailing the Hagel nomination was the job the Free Beacon was built to do. Its failure suggests either a lack of commitment to cause of freedom or, worse, a desire to see America fail. For example, a search for mentions of “Chuck Hagel” on the website returns a mere 8,870 results, roughly half the number of items published on Kate Upton. Sure, she’s a babe. But is she more important than America?

I tried to warn the world about Free Beacon “reporter” Adam Kredo, whose pro-mullah sympathies rival those of Hagel himself. I tried to shed a light on Alana Goodman’s fiendish animosity for the State of Israel. I’ve been screaming at the top of my lungs for someone to stand up to the bearded liberalism of Sonny Bunch. My pleas have fallen on deaf, treasonous ears.

Today, I learned that Racket, a left-wing magazine dreamt up by Edward Snowden’s co-conspirators, was disbanding. It is my humble demand as ombudsman of this publication that the Free Beacon follow suit. America may not be around much longer, but she stands a better chance at survival without this group of entitled millennials pretending to wage “combat journalism” on her behalf.